Alarmed by what they see as religious groups’ growing influence on government policy, a consortium has launched a public awareness campaign to defend the First Amendment’s vow that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

“That cherished freedom is under severe attack,” the Rev. Welton Gaddy said before an audience of about 700 people in San Jose. Friday’s event included an appearance by newsman Walter Cronkite, who endorsed the national campaign, called First Amendment First.

It calls for houses of worship to stop endorsing political candidates and that tax dollars not go to any charity that discriminates in its hiring or requires people to hold a certain faith to receive services.

It also says science and health policies should be based on scientific data, “not religious doctrine,” and that schools shouldn’t promote any religious preference.

So far, 103,000 people have signed a petition calling for the United States to commit to such practices. The campaign hopes to eventually deliver that petition to the policymakers for the 2008 presidential candidates, said Ari Geller of First Amendment First.

Americans are conflicted about the interplay between faith and politics, according to a 2006 poll by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Half of Americans think it’s appropriate for churches and worship houses to express political views, and 46 percent want them to “stay out of political matters.”

Religious leaders have long been involved in political causes, but some experts say that the nature of today’s political work has fundamentally changed.

Historically, faith leaders have been involved with social movements that have political implications — such as the Rev. Martin Luther King with civil rights, or the sanctuary movement of the 1980s, said Charles McDaniel of the J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor University in Texas.

Today, some churches are more overtly political, he said, literally passing collection plates for candidates — which has gotten them investigated by the Internal Revenue Service.

King’s crusade promoted a universal value and pressured government leaders to live up to the ideals promised by the U.S. Constitution, Gaddy told MediaNews.

In contrast, some of today’s religious leaders are asking the government to impose a particular biblical view, said Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, which was created in 1994 to challenge the religious right.

“I want a nation where people can think for themselves and choose to have a religion or not have a religion,” he said, “and know that the rights and privileges are protected no matter where you are on that spectrum.”

On the other hand, politicians should consider religious interests just as they do business and labor interests, argued Larry Pegram, president of the San Jose-based Values Advocacy Council, which describes itself as “a voice for Christian values.”

The group, which sued San Jose to prevent it from recognizing same-sex marriages, creates a voters guide every year asking candidates their stances on issues such as abortion, domestic partner benefits, school prayer and promotion of abstinence in sex education classes.

“I’m disturbed by people driving out all reference to religion and Christianity,” he said.

“We don’t talk about Christmas, we talk about happy holidays. We don’t talk about Easter, we talk about spring break. We’ve done as much as we can to sanitize society and clean Christianity out of it.”

“This is a Christian country,” he said, “or was.”

The Rev. Barry Lynn argues that it’s neither. Yes, some founders were Christian, he told the Commonwealth Club audience Friday, but they never intended Protestantism to be the nation’s faith.

Lynn is executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. He recounted how tax dollars have been used in some faith-based initiatives, such as a job applicant who was rejected for being Jewish, or inmates who were offered extra perks if they enrolled in a conversion program.

Religious groups have promoted laws to undermine the teaching of evolution, he said, and to allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for contraceptives.

Such laws inherently impose certain religious beliefs on everybody, he said, ignoring that Americans belong to 1,500 different faith groups and that a growing number consider themselves atheists, humanists and secularists.

“We’re all first-class citizens in America,” he said.

Religion and politics are both important, said Cronkite, but “we ought to be able to concentrate on each of those without crossing the two of them.”

Otto Warmbier was arrested in January 2016 at the end of a brief tourist visit to North Korea. He had been medically evacuated and was being treated at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center when he died at age 22.